


Perhaps They Are Not Stars

by SBG



Series: New Life [6]
Category: Emergency!
Genre: Angst, M/M, Mother's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-13
Updated: 2012-05-13
Packaged: 2017-11-05 07:44:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/404006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SBG/pseuds/SBG
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How Johnny and Roy came to be together, as witnessed from the outside.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Perhaps They Are Not Stars

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly, no clue where this one came from. It would not let me go, however, and I've learned to not ignore that. Title taken from this passage, which is attributed as an Eskimo proverb: _Perhaps they are not stars, but rather openings in heaven where the love of our lost ones pours through and shines down upon us to let us know they are happy._
> 
> Thx to LdyAnne for finding a few embarrassing typos.
> 
> Hug your mother if you can, think of her if you cannot.

Sometimes she _was_ , and sometimes she _wasn’t_.

There were periods of nothing, in which she had no sight or hearing or anything she could relate to any human sense. She didn’t know where she went, then, or why she came back when she did. She wished she had control. She wished she could touch and speak and breathe. She wished many things.

She wished she weren’t dead.

She remembered the before and after of it, but she didn’t remember the moment it happened. She assumed that was by design. The before was sharp with thoughts and memories of her children, intense fear for the lives they’d lead without her there. She’d seen it coming, but that was all until suddenly she simply _wasn’t_ anymore. There had been no minutes or hours of confusion. She had known she was dead because she saw her body, saw the whole graphic scene of blood and twisted metal and smoke. She had watched as men dressed the same way her husband did on the job tried to extricate her before they understood she was already gone. She had stared at the bustle of rescue and recovery, detached from it but also tied to it. It tugged at her and would not let her go.

And she’d seen the driver of the other vehicle, also bloody and dead, vanish into nothingness right before her eyes. She hadn’t known where he’d gone, hadn’t seen it, but she had wanted to follow, hadn’t been able to. After and still, when she _was_ , she looked for some secret passage, some doorway she must have missed in those heady, slightly dizzying moments after she died. She never found anything. She was stuck. She didn’t know why. She didn’t know how. She only knew she had been there to witness the devastation on her husband’s face when he was told the news, so powerful he lost the ability to stay upright. How she had wanted to comfort him instead of watching helplessly as others attempted and failed to. 

She only knew she could see her babies sometimes but never, ever hug them again.

eEe

It was bright and sunny, hardly a cloud in the sky and a slight breeze making the pines whisper secrets no one could interpret, a perfect spring day. She wished she could feel the sun upon her skin, smell the blooms and walk barefoot in the luxuriant grass kept so alive in this place of death. She felt as if maybe she was in a dream, a certain softness filtered the hard edges off of every stone. It wasn’t a dream. It wasn’t as beautiful as she wanted it to be. She wasn’t here to see a picnic, laughter or happy times. She knew that the moment she found him standing there, shoulders rounded and slouched. Or, perhaps she had always known. The contrast of the bright day with the darkness weighting him in spirit made her ache in a way that was as incorporeal as she was, but no less genuine.

He looked utterly destroyed. That was the most obvious thing she noticed, and she couldn’t stop staring at his haggard, thin face. She thought years must have passed because he looked so much older than the last time she’d seen him. She didn’t understand how any of this worked yet. She couldn’t _remember_ the last time she’d seen him, not in any way she could comprehend. After countless minutes (an eternity) of staring at her sweet husband’s face and wishing she could kiss his sadness away, she finally realized he was not alone. She turned her attention to her children. In looking at them, Joanne DeSoto knew it couldn’t have been years since she’d left them. They looked as young as ever.

A closer examination of Chris and Jenny revealed that while they were still the same age she thought she remembered them to be, the way they carried themselves was … tragic. Their bodies appeared young, but their eyes. Oh, their eyes. She wondered, for the millionth time, why. Why was she still here to see her family like this? She wanted so very badly to help them. It was both cruel and kind for her to see them, every time, and she wanted to work out how it was she’d come to be with them in these moments, what the purpose might be. There had to be one. If God existed, there had to be a reason. 

Jenny had a bunch of yellow tulips clutched in her hand, Chris daisies. Jenny’s face was wet with tears, though she did not make a sound in her grief. Chris had one arm around her shoulders, so grown up and protective it made Joanne simultaneously proud and sad. On a day such as this, her children should be playing and laughing, not standing before a grave with grass barely sprouting in the rectangular mound of dirt covering where her body lay deep below. Her own name chiseled in granite was not a shock, yet was still shocking. Chris looked up at Roy, seeking something. Answers. Comfort. 

“It’s okay to talk to her. I talk to her all the time,” Roy said with a nod and a smile that did not reach his eyes. “Tell her.”

“These are for you, Mom,” Chris said. He let go of Jenny and knelt just to the left of Joanne’s marker. He gently set the daises against the stone, their stems wilted and crushed from the grip and heat of his hand. “I remember you said you like ‘em. I wish … I …”

Chris didn’t finish, and Joanne could see from the wrenching look on his face how hard he was trying not to cry. She wanted to kneel beside him and wrap him in her arms. Instead, Jenny did, crushing the tulips between them. Still standing above, the stark pain on Roy’s face was too much as he, too, tried to keep tears from spilling. Her men, too strong for their own good. She wanted them to be able to let go their sorrow. 

Jenny eased away from Chris long enough to put the squashed tulips next to the daisies, where they looked pathetic and just about the most wonderful things Joanne had ever seen. Roy crouched then, put his hands on his kids’ shoulders. He had no flowers of his own to give, no symbolic plants that were in themselves already dying. He had only their children. That was all she needed. None of them spoke for a long while, clustered together in their thoughts. 

“I love you, Mommy,” Jenny said after awhile. “I miss you every day.”

“Happy Mother’s Day, Mom,” Chris whispered, voice gruff.

Oh. 

Had she a body, the breath would have left it in that moment. As it was, she faded for a bit, went to that nothing place she didn’t understand and the next thing she knew her family was picking their way through the gravestones toward a car she didn’t recognize, a replacement for the one that died when she had. She wanted to follow, but she couldn’t seem to. She felt rooted as the stone embedded in the ground. From the distance, she saw someone waiting for them at the car. Watched Roy exchange words with him, a brief clasp of hands to shoulders and then the man approached her. She recognized the gait before she recognized him. Johnny Gage. She was not surprised and was pleased to see him. Though aviator sunglasses hid his eyes, he appeared somber, almost as sad to be there as Roy and the kids. He didn’t remove them even as he drew up to her grave.

“Hi, Jo.” 

He squatted with ease, leaned a forearm on her marker. He held something in his hands, and after a moment let it slip free. It dangled in the fingertips of his left hand and she saw it was a necklace, leather and carved stone. The strap was shiny and smooth with age, the stone darkened in spots as if it had been held, caressed and worried between fingers for years. Johnny nestled it into the earth right next to the stone, buried it like a treasure.

“This was my mother’s. She gave it to me when I moved, when I needed it. I wanted you to have it. I was always going to give it to you, because you reminded me a lot of her.”

Johnny brushed absently at the faded, threadbare denim on his left knee, silent for a moment or two.

“But I really came here to let you know I’ll watch out for them, make sure they’ll be okay,” Johnny said softly. “I promise.” 

Joanne’s soul eased, and she smiled.

eEe

The house was a study in chaos, both radio and television blaring loudly. Smoke poured from the kitchen. The sound of water rushing from a faucet left unattended was steady white noise, and there was a muffled, repetitive thump-thump-thump against a wall or door. Clothing was strewn everywhere, a sock hanging on the stair rail, a pile of shoes at the front door. A layer of dust too thick to be a week or two’s worth covered shelves she had always kept clean. And then there was the wailing she instantly recognized as Jenny. She honed in on that sound. Rather than moving to find it, she was simply there in Jenny’s room, which looked as much of a disaster area as the rest of the house.

“B-but I don’t _want_ to wear those, they have scuffs all over ‘em,” Jenny shouted, her breaths hitching with sobs, “and you know I hate my hair like this.”

Joanne suspected her daughter’s distress had nothing to do with the white patent Mary Jane shoes tossed pitifully on the floor in front of her or the hair half pulled out of a ponytail. Her mother’s instinct lived on even if she herself did not. She studied Jenny’s tearstained face, the splotches of red high on her cheeks. This was a large moment accumulated from many small ones, a volcano of irrational emotion that finally had had enough and erupted all over the place. Oh, _Jenny_ , her strong willed, beautiful girl.

“Jennifer, please,” Roy said, voice so weary it almost didn’t sound like him. “We don’t have time for this and I need you to work with me here. Please put the shoes on and let me fix your hair.”

“Mom-mommy would let me do what I want.” Jenny’s eyes were tear bright and shining. “You’re just being stupid and mean and I hate you.”

Joanne wouldn’t have let Jenny do what she wanted for the sake of it, and Jenny knew that. Jenny also didn’t truly think Roy was mean or want him gone, but Joanne saw as the words landed like physical blows on Roy anyway. She felt a pang of familiar guilt. This was her fault. If she were alive, Jenny would not be melting down in such a spectacular fashion. Or if she had, Roy would not be handling it by himself. Roy’s face bore too many lines of fatigue, the dark shadows under his eyes purple like bruises.

“You don’t really mean that, sweetheart.” Roy didn’t sound convinced, though.

The way Jenny’s head popped up to stare at him told Joanne that she caught the doubt in his tone also. The misplaced anger lingered on her face but shifted subtly into something else, shame and maturity beyond her years and deep, confused sadness. Her lower lip began to tremble and her eyes fill.

“I know. I know I’m not doing things right, but I’m trying,” Roy whispered, as he reached a hand to cup the side of Jenny’s face, his thumb skimming fresh tears away. “I need you to help me sometimes, okay?”

Jenny nodded. Her nostrils flared and she blinked. 

“I’m sorry, Daddy, you’re not mean or stupid and I don’t hate you,” Jenny said. “I love you, I don’t like these shoes anymore because I just don’t and I haven’t had braids for _so long_ because you don’t know how and Mommy did them best and I miss her so much all the time and I hate her for going away except I don’t hate her I love her and…”

Jenny’s voice rose in pitch with each increasingly desperate word, until the sound coming from her became little more than unintelligible nonsense. She started sobbing in earnest, the floodgates opened wide for what might have been weeks or even months of pent up heartache. Joanne cursed yet again whatever it was keeping her here to bear witness to her family bending and breaking at every turn. She watched Roy hug Jenny close, rub her back through the crying spell and rock gently back and forth in a comforting gesture as old as time. His other hand cradled the back of her head, whatever time constraints he had spoken of earlier were disregarded for this. He closed his eyes tight as Jenny’s sobs faded into sniffled and soft, shuddery breaths.

“Dad,” Chris said from the door.

So caught up with Roy and Jenny, Joanne hadn’t noticed her son’s arrival. Nor had she noticed the blaring television and radio sounds had diminished, the thump-thump-thump had ceased altogether. Chris had a tennis ball in his hand. She remembered how she’d have to yell at him to stop tossing it against his bedroom wall when he was bored, or upset about something. 

“Uncle Johnny’s here.”

“Oh, ah.” Roy cleared his throat. “Okay.”

“I can braid Jen’s hair if you want to go talk to him,” Chris said.

Roy loosened his hug on Jenny to twist and look at Chris, surprise on his face. “You can?”

“I know she likes it that way.” Chris shrugged. “So I practiced on her dolls.”

“Well.” Roy cleared his throat again, scrubbed his fingers at the back of Jenny’s head. “What do you think, Jenny? Want him to try?”

Jenny gave Chris a watery smile and nodded. 

Roy stood slowly, like his limbs were stiff and it was then Joanne noticed exactly how thin he’d become. She was suddenly next to him, close enough she should have been able to touch him as she wanted to. Something like relief eased a few of the lines in his face and he quietly left the room, giving one last look over his shoulder as he did so. Joanne heard him go down the stairs and the rumble of two male voices in conversation as she watched Chris carefully weave Jenny’s hair into neat plaits.

eEe

She couldn’t smell the gasoline or the burned rubber, but she knew both things were present and sickeningly strong. The car was one of those tiny little things from Japan people seemed to be driving more often these days. It hadn’t stood a chance against a sturdy Buick coupe, the thin metal frame crumpled like an accordion. Inside the car, the driver was dead behind the wheel, a mess of blood and bones. Her spirit nowhere to be seen; it had departed before Station 51 and so also she with them (with _Roy_ ) had arrived at the accident site. Joanne had lost an opportunity to uncover a way to escape her purgatory, find that doorway that must exist for others but not her. She found she didn’t mind. Those times when she _was_ , she now found solace in seeing her family any way she could.

She thought that made her a horrible person, especially at times like this, but then she wasn’t a person anymore so what did it matter?

“Cap, you need to call another fucking squad out here,” Johnny shouted, the veins in his neck protruding slightly out of shock and anger and fear. “Right now.”

“Hey,” Captain Hank Stanley called as he trotted over to Johnny. Once there, his voice softened. “I can’t have you spouting vulgarities in public like that, John. You need to control yourself, huh? And I’m the captain. I don’t take orders.”

“Please. _Please_ , Cap.” Johnny looked young and shaken, pale. “We can’t. He can’t … it’s too soon for this.”

The dead woman was petite, dark haired and bore no small resemblance to Joanne. She might be an apparition, but she could connect the dots. Oh, Roy.

“He okay?”

“What do you _think_ , Cap?” Johnny said. “No.”

“I called HQ and dispatch the moment I saw her. They’re sending Station 8’s guys. They should be here shortly. Just … can you leave him to help with the other driver, or the extraction?”

Joanne turned at last to see the reason she’d appeared here. Roy sat on the bumper of the squad. He was white as the ghost Joanne was, a fine sheen of sweat at his upper lip and forehead. Despite the fact it seemed like a sweltering summer day to her, he was shivering slightly. She hadn’t been a fireman and paramedic’s wife for years without learning a thing or two, and Roy’s shock was understandable. She hovered at his side, worried and sick with her regret and grief for him. She wanted her love to envelope him, shield him from the horror playing out around him, but her love had no form. 

“I …” Johnny swallowed, his throat clicking. “I could.”

Hank sighed and clapped a hand on Johnny’s shoulder. “Never mind, pal. You’re not looking that great yourself. Take care of him, huh? The survivor was lucky to be in such a tank of a car. He’ll be all right with the triage I can give him until Squad 8 arrives.”

“Thanks, Cap,” Johnny said. His shoulders sagged. “I … this…”

“It’s okay, I understand. We all do. Go see to your partner.”

Johnny nodded and spun on his heels, headed right for Roy. He chose the same side Joanne was occupying, and for a strange, disconcerting moment it felt like she was _in_ him, the whoosh of his blood, the pumping of his heart, the clenching pain in his stomach all very real and oh, oh, too much, she went into nothing. She couldn’t have been gone for too long, for when she _was_ again, Johnny sat on the squad bumper next to Roy, had his arm around her husband’s shoulders like it was the most natural thing in the world. And Roy didn’t look better as such, but he leaned into Johnny’s embrace, comfortable. Something registered with Joanne. She couldn’t name it.

“That woman, she looks just like…” Roy croaked, unable to voice it.

“I know, Roy,” Johnny said. 

“I’m gonna, I think I’m gonna be sick.”

Roy scrabbled to the side of the road, fell to his knees and heaved. Johnny never lost contact, never left his side, held him, a strong arm thrown across shaking shoulders, a hand on his forehead, keeping him up. 

Watching out for Roy the way he’d promised Joanne he would.

eEe

“See that one there? That’s Orion,” Johnny said, arm stretched to the sky.

“I know that one, Uncle Johnny,” Chris said, sullen and quiet. “Everybody does.”

The fire crackled and popped, and Joanne was befuddled. Several tents circled the fire, soft murmurs emanating from some of them. She recognized none of the voices, or maybe she would have but they’d gotten lost in the fog of her ghostliness. They didn’t matter so much, except it was odd for her to be here when a bunch of strangers were so near. Except then she was standing above Chris and Johnny where they perched on a log stripped of bark and faded from long use next to the fire. It was then she saw the bruise blossoming over Chris’ left eye. Chris was even keeled just like his father, slow to anger and even slower to provoke once angry. A black eye could mean too many things, none of them good.

Chris and Johnny fell into silence, one staring at the fire and the other the sky. Joanne stared at them in turn, couldn’t help but wonder why Johnny was there with her son and Roy was not. Belatedly, she noticed Chris had on his Scouts uniform and knew Roy must have had to make a decision between his children. That might explain Chris’ anger, but not the bruise.

“You want to tell me why you started a fight with that kid Robbie?” Johnny asked. He sounded casual and still studied the sky, but his face was a mask of concern. “It’s not like you, sport.”

“But I didn’t,” Chris said sharply. Then he sighed, kicked some dirt into the fire, which hissed and sent out warning sparks in response. “Not really, no, I don’t want to talk about stupid Robbie.”

Joanne saw the tears in Chris’ eyes, the fire’s reflection dancing in them. Her son bit his lip, as if trying to keep from speaking as well as keep the tears from turning into full out crying. She yearned to help him, but, again, he was very much his father’s son, taciturn. It was a delicate thing, unraveling the inner workings of someone who felt so, so much but kept it hidden away from the rest of the world. She had sometimes felt ill equipped even when she was alive to deal with that brand of hurt. She didn’t know how Johnny could be up for the task. She felt uneasy, for some reason, that it was he who was there and not family. She then immediately felt uneasy for not thinking of Johnny as family.

“Well, we’re gonna have to tell your dad something about that shiner,” Johnny said after another few moments of silence.

“I’ll tell him I fell.”

“I don’t lie to your father and neither should you, Chris. Besides, Mr. Buchanan’s going to have to report it or something, isn’t he?”

“I suppose,” Chris said. 

Johnny shifted off of the log, sprawling out to use it as a backrest instead, half reclining with his feet close to the fire. He patted the earth, and Joanne felt a weird sort of contentment when Chris slid off too and mirrored Johnny’s pose, their arms touching. Bit by bit, Chris relaxed. The tears remained, an untapped well. He sniffled a few times. Johnny pretended not to notice, face upturned as if the stars were the only things of interest to him.

“Robbie … he said … he said I was pretty much an orphan ‘cause Mom’s gone and Dad’s always working and stuff,” Chris blurted all of a sudden.

It wasn’t all of a sudden _to Chris_ , though. Joanne knew this. To her surprise, the flash of recognition on Johnny’s face hinted that he, too, knew it. Somewhere along the way, Johnny had learned her family. Joanne also read anger in Johnny’s eyes, for Chris’ suffering at the loud mouth of a stupid boy. 

“Little asshole doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Johnny said.

Joanne didn’t care for the language in front of her son, but Johnny was a single man unaccustomed to this sort of interaction with a child. Just this once, she’d forgive the bad influence, mostly because she agreed with his assessment of Robbie.

“You’re not an orphan. Robbie’s just plain ignorant. You shouldn’t listen to idiots like that.”

“I know,” Chris whispered. “I knew it then. I just … I miss my mom so much, Uncle Johnny, but I hafta be strong for Jenny and for dad and sometimes it just hurts more than I can take.”

Johnny draped an arm across Chris’ back and pulled him into a sideways hug, slid his hand up and down Chris’ bicep. That seemed a catalyst for Chris as he sobbed silently but fiercely, and it was also a catalyst for her. There was a correlation, Joanne realized, between extreme emotion and vanishing into the nothing place. When she _was_ again this time, Chris and Johnny were still huddled and her baby boy was still crying. Johnny had his eyes closed, nose pressed into Chris’ hair in a familiar, parental pose she’d had no idea he was capable of. 

“In some cultures, people believe that the stars are actually portals, little cracks into heaven. They’re there to let those we’ve lost send their love shining through to us,” Johnny said, muffled and soft and tender. “I kinda like that idea. I kinda like to think your mom’s always around, loving you and Jenny and your dad from way up in the sky.”

She was, she did and she found she could do no less than include Johnny and his surprising depths in that ethereal love of hers.

eEe

The parking lot bustled with families that streamed out of the school, headed to and fro to their cars. Joanne hadn’t been there for the play, strangely enough, but that was obviously what event had let out. Jenny was clad in a clumsily made orange suit, round and lumpy and not up to Joanne’s impeccable standards. She thought Jenny looked flawless anyway as she skipped happily along the sidewalk with cotton batting leaking out of gaps in the stitchwork, smiling in a way Joanne couldn’t recall seeing in some time. Then again, she didn’t really know that for sure.

She thought maybe she _wasn’t_ more often than she _was_ lately. A handbook would have been nice. If there were some higher purpose to her being chained to the earth, knowing the rules and what was expected of her would be very helpful. She hoped someday she would understand. She loved seeing her family, she did, but something indefinable beckoned her elsewhere all the same. 

Like Jenny’s quick, unburdened smile, she thought Roy looked different as well. She didn’t know what it was at first. It took her some time to realize it wasn’t that he looked different; it was that he looked like himself. Hale and fit, and the lines on his face were still there but were less severe. Good, that was good. She wanted nothing but good things for her family, wanted them to be alive, not just to live. It was bittersweet, though, knowing that they might be moving on, doing well in her absence. Perhaps it was this that she was sticking around for. Perhaps soon she would go, wherever it was she was supposed to go. She wasn’t sure she wanted to, but she wasn’t sure she didn’t, either. 

She thought about the stars and what they might be.

“Did you like it, Daddy?” Jenny asked. 

“It was great, Jenny.”

“What about you, Uncle Johnny?”

“I think it was a very entertaining play,” Johnny said. “Well written. The acting was incredible, especially the third pumpkin on the right. Let me tell you, that girl was out of this world.”

Jenny giggled, and so Joanne knew she had been the third pumpkin on the right. Something like pride filled her disembodied self, and then something else did as she distractedly eyed several families scooting past Roy and Jenny … and Johnny. 

“But wasn’t Sally Jones better than me? I think her costume was rounder.” 

“Of course Sally Jones wasn’t a better pumpkin than you, honey. That would be impossible, because you were the most wonderful pumpkin to ever pumpkin,” Roy said as Jenny slipped her hand into his. “And aren’t you too old for this?”

“No! One, two, three,” Jenny chanted. “Lift!”

Roy had Jenny by the left hand, Johnny the right and they swung the girl up on her cue, rocketed her feet off the ground for a few seconds and then set her back down after they’d taken a step. They repeated it on another three count. Jenny was, in fact, slightly too old for that game, but Joanne was light with the joy emanating from the trio. She faltered only a little as Roy slid a look over to Johnny and held his gaze there for a beat while Johnny laughed at Jenny’s antics, head tossed back to expose his graceful neck. 

Joanne knew that look of Roy’s well.

eEe

The decorations weren’t right, weren’t the way she’d always arranged them. Joanne didn’t think that was why she _was_ at the moment, but she noticed it anyway. The tree looked forlorn, haphazard. The star at the top was crooked. The whole affair looked like everything that was probably wrong in the DeSoto house this holiday season, and she should have expected this visit. She thought it morbidly amusing that she was the Ghost of Christmas Past except unlike the Dickens character she couldn’t actually do anything. In the multicolored, flickering light, she saw someone sprawled on the sofa. She couldn’t tell who it was and didn’t move to find out.

She remained in the living room only long enough to glean the idea of what was to come. As always, Joanne was pulled to where she needed to be. In this case, it was her bedroom. No, not hers anymore. Roy’s alone. He was there, curled up on his side with his back to the door. His hands were tucked beneath his chin and he looked so small and broken swaddled in the sheets and blankets. He seemed so not like her husband, who she’d seen fade like this and then return to some semblance of the man she knew and loved. The holidays, she thought, were difficult and she felt it was her doing. She adored the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve more than any other week of the year, and she’d left Roy alone with the memory of her delight. 

Roy was crying, that much was obvious to her without even seeing his face. In all this time, in this whatever it was she was doing, Joanne didn’t think she’d ever seen him actually cry. Certainly not at the beginning when it first happened. Not in the middle, when things started to improve. She thought he must have done so, because she knew him so well, but she had not had the agony of seeing it herself. She was grateful for that, because seeing it now was like a dull spoon scooping out her imaginary insides. She blinked to him, as if she were crouched by the bed. Worse, somehow, than watching her children sob was this slow seep of tears from Roy’s eyes like an internal valve had broken inside of him.

“Daddy?” Jenny said. 

Roy stiffened, his muscles tensed all over, but the tears did not stop. He opened his eyes, half turned his body toward the sound of his daughter’s voice and simply looked at her. The telling thing of that was that he didn’t hide his distress. Roy always kept this kind of emotion under lock and key, as if people needed protection from it. 

“Are you okay?”

“I’m just a little sad right now, Jenny.”

Jenny nodded. She walked to the bed.

“Can I sleep with you? Maybe that will make you feel better.”

Ah, sweet girl. Memories of her kids climbing into bed with them, or her alone on nights Roy worked, flipped through Joanne like a slideshow. She’d always received as much comfort as she’d given and she hoped this would work for Roy. 

“It just might,” Roy whispered. “C’mere.”

“My little daddy,” Jenny said. 

It didn’t happen sudden and it didn’t happen soon, but eventually the tears stopped falling and Joanne was left watching Roy and Jenny snuggled together in sleep. They stayed that way until the golden hues of dawn filtered through the window, and still Joanne remained. She didn’t like how in the shadowy light Roy looked like a husk, hated that Christmas was tainted with mourning for them all, wondered what more she was meant to see here. 

She caught movement at the door, Christopher standing there for a moment before he, too, climbed into the bed, careful not to disturb the sleepers. As sad as the image was, it was also serene and oh, how she missed them still. It felt muted, somehow, weakened by her distance from them, weakened by her state of death and theirs of life. She felt melancholic, yet hopeful. 

The rattle and crash of pots and pans startled all of them, including her. Jen and Chris scrambled out of bed, while Roy hung back a step or two. His eyes wandered the room, as if searching. When his attention focused on her for more than a second, Joanne held her figurative breath, but the moment passed and Roy padded from their … his room. She glanced at the picture of them together on the nightstand, and then she was in the kitchen with all of them. And Johnny, who she realized was the mystery guest from the sofa.

“I hope you don’t mind,” Johnny said under his breath to Roy while the kids puttered around for plates and forks and cups. “I found Joanne’s recipe for Christmas French toast. I thought it might be nice, but tell me if it’s too much and I’ll butt out.”

Roy clasped Johnny by the elbow, kept his hand there, his thumb moved in a gentle circle against Johnny’s bare skin.

eEe

“I don’t want green beans,” Chris said, scowled at Johnny when he scooped them on the plate anyway. “Yuck.”

“Vegetables are good for you, sport,” Johnny said with a wink and a smile. “You’re gonna eat all of ‘em too. They’ll help make you as tall as your dad someday. Maybe even taller.”

“You think I can outgrow Dad?”

“Only if you eat your veggies.” Johnny grinned. “What do you say?”

“I like green beans,” Jenny offered. “Does that mean I’ll be taller ‘n Daddy someday too, Uncle Johnny?”

Johnny beamed at her in a patented “isn’t she the cutest” way, then aimed that same expression at Roy. Joanne watched her husband smile back at Johnny, the both of them fairly radiating their affection for each other, for the kids. She remembered the first day Roy had come home after meeting Johnny. That affection had always been there, though she’d struggled to understand it, but the things she had vague recollection of seeing since her death… Joanne knew it was different now, and she still struggled to understand it. She felt it deep within her spirit that she was no longer guarding over her own family, but watching it transform into Roy’s and Johnny’s. She was equal parts alarmed and pleased, because she did not want Roy to be unhappy. She simply hadn’t expected his joy to take this particular path, with patches that were going to be rough and full of brambles. 

Then Roy abruptly got up, mumbled an excuse and fled the house, leaving Johnny and the kids stunned and quiet. Joanne expected Johnny to race after Roy, but he didn’t. He stayed, soothed the kids, cleaned up. Put them to bed when the time came. It was all so domestic, so vital for her to know and she recognized that was why she had also stayed. She stood behind Johnny as he slumped at the kitchen table, worry manifesting in fidgets and leg jostles, until the phone rang with the news Roy was drunk and in need of help. 

Her admiration for Johnny grew as he called over dear Ida Mae from next door to stay with the kids while he dashed away to collect Roy from whatever misery he’d found himself in. Whether she liked or understood it or not, Johnny was there for Roy. One hundred percent. The yearning she had to be somewhere else grew stronger and stronger, and she went to the nothing place without being pulled toward it. Maybe it was there she needed to be to find a way to move on at last.

eEe

She thought this was a mistake. This couldn’t be why she _was_ right now. It was too much, too cruel. The naked bodies before her writhed on the bed that was once hers, undulated in an age-old rhythm she knew and that was also completely foreign to her. She didn’t want to see this, didn’t want to watch. She had no choice, attention riveted to Roy’s strong shoulders, the strain of his muscles working slowly, steadily.

“Oh,” Johnny grunted. “There, yeah, that. Mmph.”

Roy chuckled, bold and cocksure in a way that Joanne would never have expected from him. Not that she expected any of this. She couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this present and attentive with her and she wanted it to not bother her as much as it did, knew that it was their history with each other that had gotten them into a rut toward the end. They would have fixed it, given time. She didn’t want to think about that, couldn’t allow herself to make comparisons, not now when it was too little and too late.

Johnny lay on his belly beneath Roy, hips and ass in the air as Roy rolled and screwed into him at an excruciatingly slow pace. Roy leaned down, pressed his face against the nape of Johnny’s neck, and skimmed his tongue through the sweat collected there. Johnny reacted by arching his back, exposing more of his neck for Roy. Despite herself, Joanne was beginning to think this was peculiarly beautiful. She was seeing more than just sex, but she still tried to _not look_ at her husband pouring himself into another. She was dead and barely there anymore, but she still loved her husband.

“God, you have no idea,” Roy murmured into Johnny’s neck, “what you do to me.”

Joanne’s eyes lit upon Johnny’s left hand grasping the bed sheet tightfisted and convulsive, and her attention stayed there when Roy’s hand slid on top of it, his fingers twined with Johnny’s. It was that she looked at as the sounds of their lovemaking reduced to moans and pants and the slick, erotic sound of skin on skin. Through it all, their hands remained locked together, until Johnny’s fingers clutched the sheet and released, rigid for long seconds. She dared to look at their bodies again, Johnny lax and easy, Roy frantic in his need, face strained and red and gorgeously ugly the way only sex could elicit. 

She would have been embarrassed to have anyone see her involuntary pull into the nothing place at the very moment Roy came with a hoarse cry, the ghostly equivalent of a climax.

She returned to that scene shortly, to her … not her Roy anymore and Johnny collapsed together, still connected by their hands and by Roy’s body inside Johnny’s. Joanne watched Roy awkwardly bend his elbow and Johnny’s by association, lift their hands to his mouth. He kissed Johnny’s palm.

“I love you,” Roy whispered. 

Johnny shifted the top half of his body a hair, raised his face to Roy’s. Kissed him slowly, tongue lazy and it was all the answer Roy seemed to need. 

Joanne wanted to weep, but not from horror or fear or sadness.

eEe

The setting was familiar, as was the bright sunshine and gentle breeze. The pines still held their secrets close, the wisdom of observing so much grief and joy and acceptance growing them somehow taller and stronger here than in any other place they took root. Jenny had yellow tulips in her hand, Chris daisies. Those were the only things that remained the same, and Joanne was so happy for it. Instead of a frail version of himself, Roy stood tall and well, peace softening his face. Her children were children again, only the barest haunt of loss wisping at the recesses of their eyes and only, she knew, because of where they were at that moment.

“Hi, Mommy,” Jenny said, no trace of tears in her tone. “Sorry it’s been a while since we visited you. We’ve been so busy! I have lots to tell you.”

Jenny spoke of it all then, her voice light and filled with childlike awe as she related things Joanne no longer had any context for, or need to hear. She knew what she needed to know about Jenny’s life this past year or so. She studied her daughter’s face, memorized the features she would love for all of time, before she moved on to do the same with Chris, then Roy. 

And then Johnny Gage, whose presence in the DeSoto family had been unanticipated but important, always had been. 

“Happy Mother’s Day, Mom,” Chris said, and it was his turn to carry on a one-sided conversation he had no idea could be heard. 

Joanne let the sound of his voice soothe her, again didn’t need to listen to the words. She didn’t know for sure if she’d need the last looks at her loved ones, either, if where she was going it even mattered. This was for her, she needed it for herself. Once she had her fill, she took the scene in as a whole. The grass was full and lush on her plot and she was glad. It looked complete, final in a way it hadn’t a year ago. She looked closer and spotted a hint of leather poking out of the ground near the headstone, Johnny’s first gift to her but not his last. In watching her family struggle and thrive, she had found her own peace of a sort. She understood why she’d stayed behind so long. She studied the family standing there a little less sad than they’d been before, and a lot more whole. 

It was everything in the world she’d wanted for Roy and Chris and Jenny. It might not have been easy, it might not ever be easy, but it was real and solid and good and she could not begrudge the somewhat unorthodox manner in which this family had come to be. 

Behind the family, at the edges of the cemetery, Joanne saw it. It was a sliver at first, a dark patch amid the bright blues and greens of spring, and it sent ripples of fear through her until she realized what it was. She stood there, then, at the precipice of her great beyond, flickering lights between expanses of fathomless dark. 

Joanne entered it, learned what it was to be a star.


End file.
